In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free;While God is marching on.Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

Please stop over to teresamerica and share her tribute to a true American hero.

YOU'D have thought by the media lovefest that the pope had died a tragic death after a lifetime of caring for lepers.

But, no, it was the death of Michael Jackson, a drug-addled, creepy-beyond-words, accused pedophile who literally bought his children with the help of two brood mares and, apparently, his dermatologist -- a group of amoral savages who had no problem giving their kids to a man who looked like the Phantom of the Opera and who behaved like a depraved worm.

You can call it "adoption," but I call it child-trafficking.

OK, I said it -- and it's about time somebody had the nerve to say what millions of people must feel and believe about the once-talented black man who turned himself into a white woman before turning himself into a monster.

But you'd never know any of that if you'd listened for the past week to the endless prattle from the sickening, fawning media and all those Hollywood music phonies who were crying crocodile tears over someone they'd mostly avoided like, well, a pedophile.

Even the president of the United States felt compelled to issue a statement. Are you kidding me?

I say all this not just as some casual bystander to the Michael Jackson freak show -- though I was a Jacko freak back in 1993, when I was as in awe of him as the rest of the world. But then one day, a friend came to see me at my office at another newspaper and everything changed.

"My cousin's boy's been hijacked by Michael Jackson," he said. He pulled out two photos of the boy, Jordie Chandler, with Jackson. They were dressed alike -- in fedoras, little black suits, each wearing one freaking glove. They were on a roller-coaster -- in Europe.

Jordie's mother had remarried, and his stepfather had introduced her to Jackson. Within weeks, the sleepovers among Jackson and her gorgeous 13-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter began. The boy broke down and told his father that he'd been molested at Jackson's playground, Neverland Ranch, and in Europe.

The dad, a dentist-to-the-stars and screenwriter, contacted authorities, and shortly thereafter was jumped and beaten bloody in a garage. His home was broken into, and thugs menaced patients in his waiting room. The authorities told him it might be best if he and his son disappeared for a while. They settled for more than $20 million. The father took the boy underground, and he had plastic surgery and disguised himself for safety. Dental practice destroyed, screenwriting career over, family in tatters.

Jackson walked free -- or as free as a tortured soul can be -- to repeat over and over again his hideous tricks with children at Neverland, a place straight out of "Hansel and Gretel."

It is in this very spot where his family wanted to put on their grotesque public display of his sadly emaciated, needle-marked body, reportedly to be dressed "like a prince," as though he has become one of the garish statues upon which he loved to drop millions in Las Vegas hotel tchotchke shops. Another circus of the macabre to add to the horror that became Michael Jackson's life.

This is the kind of madness that's followed Jackson's death -- everyone is acting as though the world has lost one of its greatest men.

The King of Pop was a great entertainer -- innovative beyond anyone the world had ever seen -- but he turned into a disgustingly depraved man who hung an infant off a balcony and forced his kids to walk around with masks, veils, towels and even nets over their faces.

Great men don't pretend to be childlike to disguise their depravities. Shameful.

A few months ago there was a fatal crash of a bus headed to one of California’s tribal casinos. Several of the passengers killed were “patients” of in-home supportive services from the Sacramento area -- people who were supposed to be so infirm as to require constant attention. As a senior deputy district attorney from Sacramento County said, “If you are able to get on a bus and go gamble, then maybe the medical documentation you submitted to qualify for the program wasn’t accurate.”

Less than a month after California voters overwhelmingly rejected billions in taxes in a May 19 special election, the legislature’s Democrats are pushing $1.9 billion in new taxes on oil, vehicle licenses and tobacco to help close a $24.3 billion state deficit.

A newly-invigorated Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to veto any tax increases. The California governor has also moved to block additional borrowing to paper over California’s overspending -- a first for him. Harking to the early days of his governorship when he called to “blow up the boxes,” Schwarzenegger wants government reform, especially in California’s bloated and fraud-ridden welfare programs.

A Schwarzenegger veto of the Democrats’ new budget, with its reliance on taxes, threatens to move California to insolvency, as the Golden State’s cash reserves are rapidly running out. A state cash crunch could unleash political forces beyond anyone’s understanding, with overburdened taxpayers facing off against state workers, people dependent on state programs, and government contractors.

Schwarzenegger signed off on a massive $13 billion tax increase in February, the largest tax increase in U.S. history at the state level. California is now one of America’s top three highest-taxed states. Now the state’s deepening economic slump and Democrats’ reluctance to enact any substantive reforms may have nudged the governor back to the right -- at least for negotiating purposes.

Meanwhile, an additional bailout from the federal government is not yet in sight. The Obama administration is counseling a tough love approach -- for now -- saying that if more federal dollars were to come to California, it would be with onerous conditions designed to ward off requests from other states. No doubt, those federal strings would include requirements for massive new state taxes in exchange for freshly printed Federal Reserve notes.

A high-profile example of how government has gone wrong in California can be found in its welfare system. With only 12 percent of America’s population, California now strains under 32 percent of the nation’s welfare caseload, according to data from the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Year after year, the one consistent thing Schwarzenegger has tried to do is to reform California welfare to reduce fraud and encourage welfare recipients to graduate to the dignity of work. And, year after year, legislative Democrats have rebuffed him.

The latest welfare showdown has Schwarzenegger proposing to cut $765 million from California’s most rapidly growing welfare expense: the state's In-Home Support Services (IHSS) program. IHSS pays newly unionized workers to take care of the frail and elderly, often their own parents, at home. The theory is that care in a convalescent home is far more expensive. The program has doubled in cost to $5.4 billion in the past five years. Conference Committee Democrats immediately slashed Schwarzenegger’s cost containment efforts to $117 million, trimming IHSS rolls by less than 10 percent. Assembly Budget Committee Chairwoman Noreen Evens (D-Santa Rosa) expressed a commonly stated Democrat concern when she said of the proposed health and welfare cuts, “The imagination runs wild on what would actually happen to these people.”

That many of “these people” are committing fraud to receive state benefits is becoming increasingly evident as Democrats have resisted most efforts to ensure only the truly needy receive help. (More...)

What If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the Fifth of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?

If George W. Bush had misspelled the word advice would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potato as “proof” of what a dunce he is?

If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on “Earth Day”, would you have concluded he’s a hypocrite?

If George W. Bush’s administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually “get” what happened on 9-11?

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how he is inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in just a few months -- so you'll have three years and six months to come up with an answer.

MacHeath at Newgate News shares his family's experiences with socialized medicine in Britain.

"6. The receptionist who gave a patient an appointment (requiring an 80-mile round-trip by taxi) on the consultant’s day off."

Over the past few years, three close relatives of mine have been seriously ill. In each case, their chances of survival were seriously impaired by a catalogue of mismanagement and inefficiency. In particular, the delays in diagnosis and treatment, if other patients have had the same experiences, could be significant in the UK’s shameful cancer survival statistics.

I was once told by a consultant that the number of ‘no-shows’ equalled his waiting list and cost the NHS many thousands every year. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever fully researched why patients miss appointments; they could start by asking my family, who have, despite their assiduous efforts to attend every appointment, experienced all of the following:1. A consultant’s appointment letter sent to an empty house – the ‘client’ being a long-term in-patient in hospital at the time.2. Several urgent appointment notifications received some days after the appointment date because ‘the hospital post-room operates one day a week to save money.

Yuri Bezmenov is a Soviet KGB operative who defected. In an eye-opening interview, he outlines the Soviet plan to undermine America and eventually turn it into a socialist state and then into a communist one. He also discusses their plans to infiltrate our schools, media, use "useful idiots" on the left, and so on.

Bezmenov completely explains the Soviet (socialist, communist) influence and their plan to do here in this country exactly what is happening today, under much different auspices.

Michelle Malkin answers this question, and you'll never guess who's lobbying for the dismantling of private medicine.

"MoveOn, of course, is the recreational political vehicle of radical liberal sugar daddy George Soros. The magnate’s financial fingerprints are all over the HCAN coalition, which includes MoveOn, the action fund of the Center for American Progress (a Soros think tank) and the Campaign for America’s Future (a pro-welfare state lobbying outfit)."

If you believe the White House, there are 30 million Americans who support a government health care takeover. But if you look at the funding behind the Obamacare campaign, it’s the same few leftist billionaires, union bosses and partisan community organizers pushing the socialized medicine agenda. Let’s connect the dots.

On Thursday, a national "grassroots" coalition called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) will march on Capitol Hill to demand universal health care. The ground troops won’t have to march very far. HCAN, you see, is no heartland network. It is headquartered at 1825 K St. in Washington, D.C. — smack dab in the middle of Beltway lobby land.

In fact, 1825 K St. is Ground Zero for a plethora of "progressive" groups subsidized by anti-war, anti-Republican, Big Nanny special interests. Around Washington, the office complex is known as "The Other K Street." The Washington Post noted in 2007 that "its most prominent ten-ants form an abbreviated who’s who of well-funded allies of the Democratic Party. Big money from unions such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as the Internet-fueled MoveOn, has provided groups like those at 1825 K Street the wherewithal to mount huge campaigns." (More...)

Richard at EU Referendum warns us (surprise, surprise) that Green Jobs ain't what they're cracked up to be.

"Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the US should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created..."

While the stupidity of president Obama continues to break new records, one would struggle for find anything more facile than his claim that his obsession with global warming will create millions of new green jobs and so spur the US economy toward recovery.

Now, even Reuters is beginning to notice, offering a details of a Spanish report which rather confounds Obama's enthusiasm for Spain as an example to follow.

The report is produced by economics professor Juan Carlos of the University of Madrid, who has found that for every green job "created" by the Spanish government, an average of 2.2 other jobs have been destroyed. And, of those fabulous green jobs, only 1 in 10 was permanent. (More...)

ROME – Think of a skip overflowing with rubbish. The cleansing department is on strike and the skip never gets emptied. It won’t be long before the contents begin to poison the air with unpleasant smells, pose public health problems and exasperate residents. Something very similar happens in all the cells in our bodies when they are unable to break down the toxins their own activities generate. Over time, the waste accumulates, triggering a chain of events that can bring on very serious conditions, like Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s chorea, Parkinson’s disease and a swath of accumulation syndromes, such as mucopolysaccharidosis, glycogenosis and others, on the long list of rare genetic diseases. The mechanism underlying this malfunction has now been revealed by researchers at TIGEM, the Telethon institute of genetics and medicine, in Naples. Yesterday, the study was published in Science. (More... )

June 30, 2009

"Well, the president has a knack for getting all of these big decisions wrong. Two weeks ago he refuses to meddle in a country where peaceful demonstrators are getting shot by a theocratic dictatorship. He doesn't want to choose sides.

And now he's eager to president on behalf of the president in Honduras who is a Chavez wannabe, who is strong-arming his way to a referendum that has been declared illegal by his Supreme Court as a way to have a referendum to establish a constituent assembly which will establish a new constitution, which will be a Chavez-like dictatorship.

That's what everybody understands in Honduras, and that's why the Supreme Court had ruled the referendum illegal. Only Congress has a right to call it, not the president. Congress had denounced it.

The Supreme Court had told the military not to assist in the referendum because it's illegal. So Zelaya fires the chief of staff of the army. The Supreme Court orders him reinstated, he fires him again.

This guy is acting extra-constitutionally. Yes, he was elected, but Hitler was as well, and Chavez also was. It's easy to dismantle a democracy if you a president if you are intent on doing it, and he is intent on doing it.

So our decision ought to be, yes, a coup isn't a nice thing, but it's preferable to having Zelaya dismantle the democracy. And we should insist on the elections of a president as scheduled in November, so it is a temporary situation.

Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions."

Yeah, I know this is a blatant ploy to draw new readers, but I'd rather think of it as an erotic stroll down mammary lane.

Our older readers (Rhod, LL and Daisy) probably remember lining up at the Bijou on a Saturday morning. The stench of JuJuBees and Sugar Daddys would fill the heavy air. Suddenly the houselights would lower, a shrill cheer would rise from the prepubescent throng, and Tarzan would introduce us to the wonders of jungle life.

June 29, 2009

Richard at EU Referendum accurately addresses a political time bomb ticking in the UK

"...while Thatcher killed off the National Front in the late 70s by taking the issue immigration head-on, Cameron is silent. The subject scares away voters in the marginal seats he needs to take power. Westminster only cares about swing voters in swing seats - so millions are forgotten. Thus writes Nelson, the silence from Westminster suggests that the BNP's "shocking success story" is far from over."

In the News of the World yesterday, Fraser Nelson writes a piece under the heading "Condemned by silence".

He notes that, three weeks since the BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY's election triumph, no party has started to discuss immigration. Westminster parties have kept their baffled silence and are giving the BNP a monopoly over the most explosive issue in politics.

You'd think, writes Nelson. Gordon Brown and David Cameron would have been shocked into action after seeing Griffin win a seat in Brussels, his party taking almost a million votes.

Immigration was always a "big subject" and it is bigger now because layoffs in the recessions are hitting British-born people hardest. Directly from the Office for National Statistics – but not openly published – Nelson has found that there are fewer UK-born workers in the private sector than 12 years ago.

In the last year there are 119,000 more migrant workers in UK jobs, but 615,000 fewer UK-born workers. In recent months, both are falling. But UK-born workers are being laid off at five times the rate. Workers, he says, can see it with their own eyes, and ask: why? And because no mainstream party has an answer, the BNP prospers. (More...)

Diana West at The Brussels Journal believes that Americans are voluntarily giving up their First Amendment rights.

"Soon, the president was giving up other words, other pieces of our culture. Operation Infinite Justice, the Pentagon name for the assault on the Taliban, for example, was changed after Muslims complained that they believed only Allah dispenses infinite justice."

Americans are proud, and rightly so, of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which, among other things, protects speech from government control. The Amendment says in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Increasingly, however, Americans seem content to regard the First Amendment not as the fundamental working tool of democracy, but as a national heirloom, a kind of antique to admire rather than put to use. I don’t think many of my countrymen perceive how profoundly their attitude toward free speech has changed. But there is a difference between having freedom of speech and exercising freedom of speech, one that has become glaringly and distressingly obvious to me since September 11, 2001. So, while it is true that the US government is not Constitutionally empowered to make laws that censor Americans, it is also true, I believe, that Americans have come to censor themselves. But why?

I speak today in regard to the effect of Islam on speech in America - Islam as it has entered our national discussion and debate – and, I must add, lack of national discussion and debate - since the heinous Islamic attacks on the US nearly 8 years ago. (More...)

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